connected himself closely with the domestic griefs and joys of another, over and above his primary service of giving to him the strength and the encouragement of a profound literary sympathy, at a time of universal scowling from the world; suppose this man to fall into a situ ation in which, from want of natural connections and from his state of insulation in life, it might be most important to his feelings that some support should be lent to him by a family having a known place and acceptation, and what may be called a root in the country, by means of connections, descent, and long settlement. To look for this, might be a most humble demand on the part of one who had testified his devotion in the way supposed. To miss it might but enough. I murmur not; complaint is weak at all times; and the hour is passed irrevocably, and by many a year, in which an act of friendship so natural, and costing so little, (in both senses so priceless,) could have been availing. The ear is deaf that should have been solaced by the sound of welcome. Call, but you will not be heard; shout aloud, but your 'ave!' and 'all hail!' will now tell only as an echo of departed days, proclaiming the hollowness of human hopes. I, for my part, have long learned the lesson of suffering in silence; and also I have learned to know that, wheresoever female prejudices are concerned, there it will be a trial more than Herculean, of a man's wisdom, if he can walk with an even step, and swerve neither to the right nor the left.

I shall now proceed to sketch the daily life and habits of those who are familiarly known to the public as the Lake Poets; but, first of all, as a proper introduction to this sketch, I shall trace, in a brief outline, the chief incidents in the life of William Wordsworth, which are inter

esting, not only in virtue of their illustrious subject, but also as exhibiting a most remarkable (almost a providential) arrangement of circumstances, all tending to one result that of insulating from worldly cares, and carrying onward from childhood to the grave, in a state of serene happiness, one who was unfitted for daily toil, and, at all events, who could not, under such demands upon his time and anxieties, have prosecuted those genial labors in which all mankind have an interest.

CHAPTER XI.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

6

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth, a small town of Cumberland, seated on the river Cocker. His father was a lawyer, and acted as an agent for that Lord Lonsdale, the immediate predecessor of the present, who is not unfrequently described by those who still remember him as the bad Lord Lonsdale.' In what was he bad? Chiefly, I believe, in this that, being a man of great local power, founded on his rank, on his official station of Lord Lieutenant over two counties, and on a very large estate, he used his power in a most oppressive way. I have heard it said that he was mad; and, at any rate, he was inordinately capricious capricious even to eccentricity. But perhaps his madness was nothing more than the intemperance of a haughty and a headstrong will, encouraged by the consciousness of power, and tempted to abuses of it by the abject servility which poverty and dependence presented in one direction, embittering the contrast of that defiance which inevitably faced him in another throughout a land of freedom and amongst spirits as haughty as his own. He was a true feudal chieftain ; and, in the very approaches to his mansion, in the style of his equipage, or whatever else was likely to meet the public eye, he delighted to express his disdain of modern refinements, and the haughty carelessness of his magnifi

:

cence. The coach in which he used to visit Penrith, the nearest town to his principal house of Lowther, was old and neglected his horses fine, but untrimmed; and such was the impression diffused about him by his gloomy temper and his habits of oppression, that the streets were silent as he traversed them, and an awe sate upon many faces, (so, at least, I have heard a Penrith contemporary of the old despot declare,) pretty much like that which may be supposed to attend the entry into a guilty town, of some royal commission for trying state criminals. In his park, you saw some of the most magnificent timber in the kingdom - trees that were coeval with the feuds of York and Lancaster, yews that perhaps had furnished bows to Cœur de Lion, and oaks that might have built a navy. All was savage grandeur about these native forests: their sweeping lawns and glades had been unapproached, for centuries it might be, by the hand of art; and amongst them roamed not the timid fallow deer but thundering droves of wild horses.

-

Lord Lonsdale, according to an old English writer, (in describing, I think, the Earl of Arundel,) went sometimes to London, because there only he found a greater man than himself; but not often, because at home he was allowed to forget that there was such a man.' Even in London, however, his haughty injustice found occasions for making itself known. On a court day, (I revive an anecdote once familiarly known,) St. James's Street was lined by cavalry, and the orders were peremptory, that no carriages should be allowed to pass, except those which were carrying parties to court. Whether it were by accident or no, Lord Lonsdale's carriage advanced, and the coachman, in obedience to orders shouted out from the window, was turning down the forbidden route, when a trooper rode up to the horses' heads, and stopped them:

the thundering menaces of Lord Lonsdale perplexed the soldier, who did not know but he might be bringing him. self into a scrape by persisting in his opposition; but the officer on duty, observing the scene, rode up, and, in a determined tone, enforced the order, causing two of his men to turn the horses' heads round into Piccadilly. Lord Lonsdale threw his card to the officer. and a duel followed; in which, however, the outrageous injustice of his Lordship met with a pointed rebuke; for the first person whom he summoned to his aid, in the quality of second, though a friend, and (I believe) a relative of his own, declined to sanction, by any interference, so scandalous a quarrel with an officer for simply executing an official duty. In this dilemma for probably he was aware that few military men would fail to take the same disapproving view of the affair he applied to the present Earl of Lonsdale, then Sir William Lowther. Either there must have been some needless discourtesy in the officer's mode of fulfilling his duty, or else Sir William thought the necessity of the case, however wantonly provoked, a sufficient justification for a relative giving his assistance, even under circumstances of such egregious injustice. At any rate, it is due to Sir William, in mere candor, to suppose that he did nothing in this instance but what his conscience approved; seeing, that in all others his conduct has been such as to win him the universal respect of the two counties in which he is best known. He it was that acted as second; and, by a will which is said to have been dated the same day, he became eventually possessed of a large property, which did not necessarily accompany the title. Another anecdote is told of the same Lord Lonsdale, which expresses, in a more eccentric way, and a way that to many people will be affecting ing the moody energy of his passions.

to some shockHe loved, with